A century ago, and for about 400,000 years before that, most people burned wood to stay warm. Then the arrival of oil- and gas-fired central boilers and furnaces liberated them from the toil, mess and smoke. Today, fluctuating prices, a desire for independence and a new generation of clean, efficient stoves have attracted homeowners like Richards to a flourishing back-to-basics home-heating movement. Annual shipments of pellet stoves, which burn biomass in the form of compressed sawdust from lumber mills or managed forests, jumped from 18,360 to 141,211 units between 1999 and 2008, a 650 percent increase. Large-scale installations include Vermont’s Bennington College, which uses a wood-chip-fueled biomass boiler to heat 85 percent of its campus.

Being passive isn’t always a bad thing, especially when it’s passive solar heating and cooling. The idea behind passive solar is to design buildings that take advantage of natural heat from the sun in winter; and shade and wind and in the summer. Although the concept has been used in many cultures for centuries, passive solar design principles recently have been refined a great deal, even since the 1970s.

The ground temperate is a constant that you can use to heat and cool your house. Over the summer the deep ground temperature is warmer than the air and into he summer it is cooler. The ‘ground-source heat pump system’ uses underground water from a 1,000-foot deep well and pumps, that are basement heat exchangers to move the water.

The system uses no fossil fuels and provide comfort year-round, with zero CO2 emissions, for a fraction of the operating cost of conventional HVAC systems. Geothermal systems also have fewer moving parts than conventional systems, so they are more reliable and require less maintenance, so they last for decades. As a rule of thumb, complete systems run about $2500 to $3500 per 500 square feet of living space. So, a complete geo-thermal system for an average size 2,500 sq. ft. home would run between $12,500 and $17,500. Geo-thermal for larger homes could easily cost $25,000 to $30,000.

Biomass Fuels
Biomass fuels are organic materials—often industrial byproducts—that can be used as fuel for heating. The definition of a biomass fuel varies from state to state, but in general, it is an organic matter generated on a reoccurring basis that can be used for fuel.

Adding character to your cook space doesn’t have to put you in the poor house: The secret’s in the finishing touches. See how fresh paint, new lighting, and smart use of colorful tiles and vintage accents can personalize the hub of your home.

Reinvent dark wood or white cabinets by painting them a refreshing hue. Here, a pale sage green reminiscent of vintage jadite dishware balances the intensity of the red floor. Premium Plus Ultra interior semigloss acrylic latex in Frosted Jade, $34 per gallon; behr.com.

Older toilets use about 3.5 to 7 gallons per flush. Low flow toilets use only 1.6 gallons per flush and save your family between 8,000 and 20,000 gallons of water per year, per toilet. Dual-flush toilets take savings to the next level, because they have two buttons – one for a light flush at 0.9 Gallons and the other for a heavy flush at 1.6 gallons.

Dual-flush toilets have been very popular in Europe and Asia for years. They save an average of approximately 26 per cent more water than single-flush ‘Low-Flow’ models, and you can control when you need more or less water.

On average, Americans recycle less than a third of our waste. If we doubled our efforts and recycled 60 percent, we d save 35 million barrels of oil a year. The best way to get your whole family involved in the recycling effort is to set up a system that s easy to use. Color-code and label bins with pictures if necessary, and post instructions where everyone can read them. Offer kids the incentive of keeping the refund for washing out, organizing and redeeming the bottles and cans.

Did you know that almost $2 billion is spent on the production of paint every year, and almost 60 million gallons of that paint becomes left over in the United States alone? Become apart of the movement and help save the environment by butting back your paint purchases.

Spend your hard earned cash on paint that pays for itself, like recycled paint. Recycled paint can cost half the price of new paint, and you help the environment by reusing.

Modern chemicals do many good things for us. But some also do harm — to us, wildlife or the environment. With U.S. industries now using some 75,000 chemicals, and as we discover more about their downsides, public demand for greater precaution is growing. The dramatic increase in organic food sales in the last two decades is one sign of this growing public concern.

In 2002, the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog, released the results of a “body burden” study that found 167 chemicals present in the blood and urine of nine volunteers. Then in 2005, the group reported the results of its tests of 10 newborn babies, in whom it found 287 chemicals present.